Love Goes (Like This)
by orangeflavor
Summary: "Sasuke is looking at her father, and then he is bowing, the line of his back like the angle of a kunai (one she is too dutiful to dodge), and she is reminded that this is not a wedding." - Hyuuga Hinata and Uchiha Sasuke. From first to last.


Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: Just a little something for Sasuhina month. Prompt is "Marriage AU". No dialogue as a challenge to myself.

Love Goes (Like This)

" _Sasuke is looking at her father, and then he is bowing, the line of his back like the angle of a kunai (one she is too dutiful to dodge), and she is reminded that this is not a wedding."_ \- Hyuuga Hinata and Uchiha Sasuke. From first to last.

It isn't love at first sight.

Instead, it goes like this:

Her white kimono is pristine, the length of her sleeves just right, the arch of her collar a graceful, delicate thing. She is all this, and yet, he does not have eyes for her.

But this she expects.

Sasuke is looking at her father, and then he is bowing, the line of his back like the angle of a kunai (one she is too dutiful to dodge), and she is reminded that this is not a wedding.

This is a contract, and their families are witnesses to it, not guests. It is their responsibility to their clans, and not their affection, that puts them before the altar.

Her kimono is no less white, her sleeves no less perfect, her collar no less graceful, when he finally looks at her and yet –

No, she thinks, it isn't love at first sight (even if she believed in such things).

But he is an attentive husband, in a quiet, practiced sort of way, and she is a compliant wife, in a refined, unobtrusive sort of way. She tells him she will not give up her shinobi career. He says he has never thought to ask it of her. When he joins ANBU, she is the one to hand him his mask and to fit his flak jacket to his chest, her hands smooth along his back, her lips pursed in a thin line. He leaves without farewells, as he always has, and this she does not begrudge him.

In the silence of their marriage, they find ways to live around each other.

She has no desire or reason to want for more.

* * *

It isn't love at second sight either.

Sex is almost clinical for them. They are not naïve enough to believe this union was so desired by each of their clans for any other reason than producing powerful offspring. And while Hinata is hesitant at first, she also trusts Sasuke when he reassures her. It's in the way he keeps the lights off at her insistence, and the way he lets her disrobe herself, and the way he says nothing when her fingers curl painfully along his shoulders when he's inside her for the first time.

He never moves until she is ready, and even when the shadows of night hide his face from her view, the way he pants above her makes her turn her head, and she isn't exactly sure why.

It isn't until she spars with him for the first time that she begins to understand it.

She comes upon him in the dim hours of early morning, the field still wet from dew, and when she moves to retreat before he can notice her, he is already calling her name. Already calling her into the clearing.

And what a silly thought, to believe she could ever escape his notice (not with those eyes, and neither with hers, and some things she sees better than others but not this).

He nods to her, bracing his feet in the dirt, and before she can collect herself enough to understand that he actually wants to spar with her, he is already moving in. In the time it takes for her eyes to flash their deadly white in his direction, he is already slinging kunais past her brow. By the end of the afternoon, he has his katana at her throat and she has two fingers dug between his third and fourth ribs, and they stand there like this, staring at each other, Sasuke's eyes trailing down the sweat-slicked skin of her throat, Hinata's eyes fixed to his mouth when he licks his lips.

That night, when Sasuke pulls her robe open as he lays atop her, his fingers trail along her throat, his eyes following the motion. Her lips part in anticipation, and Sasuke seems to catch the motion, the heated rush of her gasp focusing him, and he leans in, lips pressing to her pulse as she arches unconsciously. His hands slide beneath the robe, her fingers twining in his hair as he expels a tremulous breath against her throat.

The next time he has a katana at her neck he doesn't bother to hide his desire.

It isn't love at second sight, she knows this. But she also knows that 'contract' no longer suffices either.

* * *

It isn't even love at third sight.

In the war, they see many things. More than any Byakygan has the right to see (and then maybe even more), but Hinata is used to keeping a muted gaze. She has grown up in a house of transparent walls, where no one's suffering is ever a private affair, regardless of how uncouth the voicing of it may be.

But when she sees Sasuke –

His shoulders curve inward just a degree too sharply to be simply exhaustion, and his fingers flex just a touch too erratically to be simply muscle spasms, and his gaze cuts just a bit too harshly to be simply caution.

Her father once told her that some soldiers never come home. She hadn't realized until now that he hadn't meant just the body bags.

She reaches for Sasuke now, in the hazy light of dusk, their comrades bandaged and moaning in the tent behind them. He flinches, but he seems to know her. Seems to know her presence and her intent and her touch. He does not turn to her though, and for a moment she thinks he is lost to her as well.

(He was never hers to begin with, she reminds herself, and yet – and yet…

She knows exactly how he takes his tea and exactly how he likes her hair and exactly what he sounds like when dreaming and if this doesn't make him hers then what have they been doing all these years?)

She doesn't say his name, but then, she doesn't have to. When she steps up next to him he takes her hand and raises it to his mouth, holds it there, braces his lips against her knuckles and doesn't flinch at the blood caked between them. She sucks in a breath at the sudden tender motion, and then his eyes flick to hers, Sharingan red.

(There is no such thing as a muted gaze in the Uchiha household.)

The next morning the fighting resumes. The touch of his lips still lingers on her knuckles, even when they are chakra-lined and deadly, even when they are cracked and bleeding. In the end, she finds him much the same, and she cannot help the sigh of relief she breathes against his lips when she finds him amongst the wreckage.

She still isn't sure whether he may be called hers, but she understands now that she is very much his.

* * *

It isn't love at any sight, really.

Sometimes she can feel his gaze on her when she tends to the garden at the edge of the compound. He never joins her, and this she is grateful for. There is little in this life that she can claim as solely hers and while this patch of land is quite insignificant, it is still – hers.

Sasuke knows this, perhaps better than anyone, and so he leaves her to her quiet tending.

He shares the herbs she brews for teas though, and the ones she makes into salves, and the ones she places in small bundles on the gravestones they visit together.

He shares the years with her, and then one day, Hinata suddenly realizes that they have grown old together.

(Her wedding kimono is still white but she is no longer a graceful, delicate thing – it is not something she mourns, for Sasuke has never been delicate with her either.

Tender perhaps, even affectionate at times, but never delicate – there is no softness in such a marriage as theirs and Hinata finds she's okay with that.)

She doesn't expect to spend anything less than a lifetime with him.

No, it wasn't love at first sight, she realizes, but – looking at him now, the way he curls his hand around hers, the way he doubtlessly _is_ hers – she knows it will be love at last.

It goes like this:

(love never really goes).


End file.
